Blog

Learning astral projection is a struggle for many people. Although this practice is extremely old, people who can astral project are quite rare. Due to this rarity many people think that only special or gifted people can learn this art. This just isn’t true. Astral projection might be uncommon, but it’s a skill like any other that can be learned. If you find the right methods and practice regularly, you can learn this skill in a remarkably short time. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of nonsense written about astral projection by people who simply don’t understand this skill. This is understandable to an extent, due to the fact that many authors on astral projection having little to no practical experience. In order to understand astral projection, you need practical experience.

To help you prepare for astral projection here are 5 tips that I strongly recommend. I learned these tips through extensive experience over 10 years. They helped me a great deal to astral project consistently and powerfully, and they can certainly help you.

Relaxation is the key to astral projection

The inability to relax fully is the key reason many people can’t astral project. The free astral projection guide contains an extremely effective relaxation technique that anyone can learn. It’s especially important if you suffer from stress or anxiety, because these problems can have a negative impact on your astral projection exercises. One thing to keep in mind is that you must never push yourself while learning relaxation techniques. The harder you push yourself, the more tension you build, and the harder it becomes to relax. Astral projection requires gentle effort, not trying harder. The harder you try, the more you pressure yourself, and the more you pressure yourself, the less likely you are to relax. An excellent way to prepare yourself quickly for deep relaxation is through the 4-7-8 breathing technique developed by Dr. Andrew Weil. With this technique you can relax virtually anywhere and it’s very simple and easy to learn. Also, avoid any stimulants such as coffee before your practice session for at least 2 hours. Stimulants make deep relaxation very difficult, and make astral projection virtually impossible.

Learn meditation

Many people don’t know how to meditate properly, but I strongly suggest that you learn it. Meditation makes astral projection far easier because it exercises the mind in a relaxed fashion. It builds concentration and focus, calms the mind, and prepares it for your practices. By practicing meditation before your astral projection exercises, you can master the exercises far more quickly. You don’t have to meditate for extended periods of time, 10 to 15 minutes is sufficient. If you don’t know how to meditate here is a simple Zen meditation technique.

If you use medication, research it properly

Several types of medication can have an impact on your ability to astral project. Sleeping pills, sedatives, certain pain killers, and marijuana can inhibit your ability to experience REM sleep, and without adequate REM sleep, you can’t astral project. Certain medications can have the opposite effect and actually increase REM sleep, one such example is lamotrigine. Lamotrigine is used for the treatment of epilepsy, anxiety, and depression and is well known in the psychiatric profession as a substance that can cause vivid dreams. Galantamine is another example. This medication is used for the treatment of cognitive impairment disorders such as Alzheimer’s and has shown very promising results in improving lucid dreaming. If you use a medication that inhibits REM sleep, ask your doctor for a possible alternative, or consider using a lucid dreaming supplement if your doctor agrees.

Use supplements if necessary

Lucid dreaming supplements can have very good results for learning astral projection more quickly. Two very popular supplements are Calea zacatechichi used by the Chontal people of Oaxaca, and Silene capensis used by the Xhosa people of South Africa. These supplements have a long history of use by shamanic practitioners and they can work extremely well. I generally recommend using supplements such as these if you experience very little REM sleep.

If you find it hard to meditate or relax deeply due to anxiety, you might want to use valerian root. This herb is a well-known sedative that doesn’t inhibit REM sleep and can be very effective for inducing relaxation and helping you to fall asleep more easily. It’s available at most health food stores and is quite inexpensive.

Brainwave entrainment is another supplement you can investigate. These usually consist of audio files that change brainwave patterns through the frequency following response. Binaural beats and isochronic tones are the most common types of brainwave entrainment, but several others exist. They can make meditation and deep relaxation much easier to learn and can be a valuable and reliable shortcut for beginners. However, if you have epilepsy or suffer from seizures, avoid brainwave entrainment entirely because it can trigger negative symptoms.

For the sake of your safety keep the following is mind: always consult your doctor before using any supplements. This is of cardinal importance; your health must always come first.

Practice every single day

I cannot emphasize this point enough. If you don’t practice every single day, then you won’t learn to astral project. If you just miss a few days, it can set you back by weeks. With the proper techniques you can learn astral projection in 12 weeks or less, but unless you practice every day you will struggle or fail entirely. If you have a busy lifestyle, then practice only a little bit if you have to, but practice every day. Little and often is the recipe for success. So, practice, practice, practice.

If you follow these guidelines you will have very little trouble learning astral projection. Astral projection isn’t rocket science and doesn’t take a long time to learn. So, learn to relax, learn to meditate, learn about your medication, use supplements if necessary, and practice every single day. By doing this you will learn to astral project in no time.

Stress and anxiety are a huge problem is today’s society. Millions of years of evolution didn’t anticipate 21st Century lifestyles and many people suffer from these destructive disorders. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to relax anywhere and at any time; all you need to do is learn a very simple breathing technique. This breathing technique was developed by Dr. Andrew Weil as a method to treat anxiety, stress, and insomnia. It can be practiced during your day and it’s very easy to learn.

Place your tongue above the ridge of your teeth and keep it there for the entire breathing exercise

Exhale completely through your mouth with a ‘whoosh’ sound

Inhale though your nose for a count of four

Hold your breath for a count of seven

Exhale through your mouth for a count of eight making a ‘whoosh’ sound

Do this three more times for a total of four breaths

Here is a video by Dr. Weil demonstrating the technique in person:

The first few times you perform this exercise you might feel light-headed; this will soon pass with practice. What this breathing technique does is cause oxygen to circulate more completely in your body which produces a calming effect. You have to practice it twice a day or more. I recommend doing it at least in the morning when you wake up and before you go to sleep. Perform this technique whenever you feel tension, anxiety, or stress, and with continuous practice the calming effect will increase. You should increase the number of breaths to a maximum of eight in total over a period of weeks as long as it’s comfortable for you. Dr. Weil claims that when you master this technique it can help enormously in controlling stress and helping you fall asleep if you are prone to insomnia. Practice it, practice it regularly, and make it a partner for life.

Zazen meditation is the core technique of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism. It’s simple, effective, and easy to learn. However, it can take years to master completely. With daily practice, this meditation will enhance your concentration and focus tremendously and will help you to control stress and anxiety. All it involves is observing your breath in a controlled fashion. With sufficient practice, your mind will become still like water and be focused like a laser. Begin by selecting the right meditation posture. It could be the full or half-lotus posture, the seiza posture, or you can sit on a straight-backed chair with your feet flat on the floor.

Keep your mouth closed and place your tongue against your upper palate. With your tongue in the proper position, swallow once to create a seal and inhibit salivation. Otherwise, it can lead to excessive swallowing during the meditation. Keep you back straight during the entire meditation so that the diaphragm can move freely during your practice.

Sit in a comfortable meditative posture.

Place your hands in your lap in the cosmic mudra depicted in the featured image above. If you’re right-handed, the right-hand cradles the left hand with the thumbs lightly touching. If you’re left-handed then the left-hand cradles the right hand.

Softly gaze downward at a 45-degree angle at the area in front of you.

Focus on the area just below your navel and breathe normally without force or strain.

Pay attention to your breath as it moves in and out of your body.

Begin to count your breath as you breathe in and out. Count ‘one’ on inhalation then ‘two’ on exhalation, ‘three’ on the next inhalation, ‘four’ on the next exhalation, and so on until you reach 10 breaths.

Start again at one and keep counting your breaths for the remainder of the session

Pay attention to your breath for the entire meditation session. If your mind wanders, simply bring it back it back to your breath. All you have to do to practice this meditation is to remember your breath. Don’t force, don’t strain, and don’t push yourself. Practice this meditation as gently as possible and you will reap the rewards of a calmer and more focused mind.

Members of the spiritual community are often very fond of throwing the word ‘ego’ around without fully understanding it. Often the word ‘ego’ is used in the derogatory sense. It’s seen as bad, wrong, something to overcome. People are accused of falling into ‘ego traps’ and teachers try to force compliance from their students by telling them that their ego is the reason they refuse to submit, and nonsense terms like ‘ego construct’ are used to talk disparagingly of ideas they don’t agree with. This foolishness comes from incomplete knowledge of the soul that is extremely important part of being human: our will to regard ourselves and others as valuable.

In The Republic, Plato describes three parts to the soul, reason, spirit, and the appetites. It’s the second part ‘spirit’ that is important to consider in this article. The word Plato uses for ‘spirit’ is thymos (also spelled thumos), and thymos is the seat where we ascribe value to ourselves and others. He associated this part of the soul with the proud warrior that is willing to defend himself, his society, and his city. Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man, gives an interesting interpretation of thymos that is extremely important to understand. Thymos is a type of innate sense of justice, it’s that part of the soul where we recognize our own dignity and the dignity of others. When we receive recognition for acting in accordance with our abilities we feel pride; when we act wrongly or don’t live up to our potential we feel shame, and when we or others are treated unfairly we feel anger or outrage. These three things I just mentioned all stem from the thymotic part of the soul and is the seat of human dignity.

Thymos is extremely important for recognizing our value and the value of other people. Through thymos, we see others not as tools to be used, but as people who are entitled to dignity. The first form of thymos is isothymia, the will to see ourselves and others as fundamentally equal. It allows us to identify and feel outraged when others are mistreated or marginalized. It inspires us to seek justice for ourselves and others and to see all of humanity as equal. Isothymia fuels our sense of ethics and directs us towards helping others. Buddhism teaches us to have compassion for all living things, but it’s because of isothymia that we regard living things as valuable and worthy of compassion.

Thymos does have a dark side and it’s called megalothymia. Megalothymia is the desire to see oneself or one’s group as inherently more valuable than others. It fuels overweening pride and seeks to devalue other people. It can infect a person, a group or an entire nation and it’s almost entirely pernicious. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of discrimination ultimately stem from megalothymia, and it’s extremely seductive. This is the part of the soul that people associate with egotism, and the attempt to overcome it is indeed admirable. Yet it is inescapable because megalothymia and isothymia share the same space in the soul. They are both parts of the thymotic part of the self that seeks to ascribe value to things, ourselves and others.

Some spiritual teachers and members of the spiritual community are very fond of congratulating themselves on how wise, spiritual, or enlightened they are. They are completely oblivious to the seductive nature of megalothymia. Humility and equality are the qualities that should be cultivated. Unfortunately, megalothymia cannot be completely removed because its wrapped up with isothymia, and without isothymia we cannot value ourselves and other people. Thymos, the seat of human dignity, is admirable and should not be erased from the soul, but we must always be vigilant of its dark side and try to keep it under control.

When studying the phenomenon of astral projection there are two perspectives to keep in mind. One perspective is ancient and treats the out-of-body experience as a real phenomenon that argues that the mind literally leaves the body and experiences a spiritual realm. A more modern perspective sees astral projection as nothing more than a form of lucid dreaming. In this article, we will take a look at these twin perspectives.

The literal interpretation posits the existence of real worlds that exist beyond the physical world. This world is described by certain mystics and shamans as a world of the spirit. In yoga and the Western mystery tradition, there is more than one spiritual world. These different worlds stem from divinity itself and ultimately manifests as the physical world. The modern mystical perspective sees these spiritual worlds as woven into the very fabric of physical reality and forms the foundation of matter. Every atom and every elementary particle are composed of energy flowing from the spiritual worlds. Modern mystics argue that matter is condensed energy, but according to the modern spiritual perspective, energy is condensed spirit.

This higher spiritual world is the soul and spirit of the material world, and the material world is the body of the spiritual realm The human body has the same relationship to these realms. The human mind manifests physically as the brain, and the mind is the spiritual counterpart of the body. These spiritual worlds flow gradually from a spiritual divine existence and condense into matter, in the human body they manifest as different spiritual bodies of which the astral body is one. These different bodies ‘live’ in these worlds and by attuning to them through altered states of consciousness we can experience those worlds. Collectively these worlds are referred to as the planes of consciousness and the astral plane is the world very close to our own. This is the plane of dreams and the imagination before it manifests as the physical plane.

The Western materialist perspective sees the more traditional perspective as unproven. The only proof we have is the existence of the physical world and the physical body. All mental processes are physical in nature, there are no planes, only the illusions created by the brain. Some, like Michael Raduga, argue that the out-of-body experience is an illusion caused by the overlapping of REM sleep with waking consciousness. This overlap causes the existence of phenomena like out-of-body experiences, lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis and various other hallucinations such as alien abduction. Scientists have tried to test the phenomenon of out-of-body-experiences, but the results are inconclusive and offer no proof that this phenomenon is real. Furthermore, due to the inconsistencies of different cultural descriptions of out-of-body experiences, the planes must be a mental construct created by the brain and influenced by the individual’s cultural upbringing. Out-of-body experiences are, therefore, nothing more than a type of lucid dream.

These two perspectives are the dominant paradigms that describe the out-of-body experience. So which perspective is true? This is a very difficult question to answer because currently, we don’t really understand the relationship between the body and mind. Furthermore, we don’t even know the true nature of consciousness itself. Some argue that the mind is purely a brain process, but this is not exactly conclusive due to the mysterious nature of consciousness. Both paradigms have their advantages and disadvantages. In further articles, we will take a closer look at these perspectives.

On the spiritual path, you will come across a wide variety of meditation practices with different goals in mind. In this article, we take a brief look at the various types of meditation and how they work. There are roughly five main types of meditation. Although it’s common for only one of these techniques to be taught in a spiritual system, many other systems approach spirituality from different angles and combine more than one type of meditation.

Devotional Meditation

This form of spiritual practice is by far the most common. It involves praying or worshipping a deity and devoting one’s works and deeds to this being. People with a traditional religious upbringing are in a way practicing this approach this to spirituality, assuming they actually pray and actively seek the divine. This is a highly valid and effective form of spirituality if the devotee is actually sincere in her efforts. People are very fond of criticizing this form of spiritual practice, and some of the criticisms can under certain circumstances be valid. However, some truly great mystics have existed in these systems and it would be wrong to simply write off the validity of this approach.

Mindfulness Meditation

This form of meditation forms the foundation of many Buddhist and Yogic systems and is extremely effective and comes highly recommended. Mindfulness meditation is aimed at stilling the mind completely so that only pure consciousness remains. In its purest form, mindfulness meditation uses no mantras, no manipulation of energy, and no visionary phenomena. Rather, this form of meditation involves focusing on the breath or observing one’s thoughts to still the mind. I urge people to learn this type of meditation, because it’s safe, very effective, and is an extremely powerful supplement to other practices.

Chanting

Chanting is the use of mantras to perform meditation. According to the Bihar School in India, mantras are slower than other techniques but work for virtually everyone. Through constant and regular practice the mind becomes absorbed in the mantra which results in spiritual states. Depending on the system, mantras can be devotional in nature, but that depends on the system. The key to proper chanting is the pronunciation of the mantra, the way the mantra is chanted, the meaning of the mantra, and regularity of practice.

Energetic Meditation

A very popular approach that involves the manipulation of spiritual forces within the body. Meditation on energy points, or the movement of chi or prana within the body forms the backbone of this practice. The Taoist system of qigong and the Yogic meditations on the chakras fall under this category. The most potent form of this type of meditation is the awakening of a spiritual force in the body called kundalini, which is seen as the fastest route to spiritual enlightenment. Kundalini is, however, extremely dangerous to awaken and there are many accounts of this force inducing psychosis in the unprepared seeker

Eidetic Meditation

Eidetic meditation is the name I’ve given to meditations that use psychedelics, dreams, visions, and out-of-body experiences. Of all the approaches, this form of spirituality is the oldest and can be traced back to the Neanderthals, and Cro-Magnon Man. Shamanism, magic, and lucid dreaming also fall under this category. Some, but not all, Eastern systems tend to be critical of this approach because they believe that these practices are all illusions. The irony is that virtually every Eastern system can trace back its origins to this approach and is still widely practiced in many parts of the world. Eidetic meditation has deep cultural roots for many tribes and peoples and should be respected.

I encourage everyone to do research on these different approaches and find what suits them. As previously mentioned many systems combine these approaches so you don’t have to restrict yourself to just one of them. Yogic systems might use meditations on the chakras, combined with mantras to achieve the desired effect. Tibetan schools of Buddhism might use all of them, including the use of lucid dreaming to understand the nature of reality. Practice these approaches diligently and reap their rewards, but choose whatever works best for you

The 4th and 5th Centuries B.C.E was a fascinating time in the history of Western philosophy. It was during this period that the true giants of Greek philosophy made their appearance. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are considered to be the pinnacle of this period and laid the foundation for centuries to come. Socrates’ student, Plato, is often considered to be among the most the powerful thinkers to have ever existed in the ancient world. His influence is so great in fact that the influential 20th Century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead stated: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”

To get a little insight into Plato we must look at his powerful thought experiment described in The Republic known as the Allegory of the Cave. Plato asks us to imagine prisoners bound within a deep cave; all they can look at is the wall of the cave in front of them. Behind them are people walking with various objects with a fire burning behind them. The fire and the objects cast shadows on the cave wall in front of the prisoners. Plato argues that because these prisoners have only seen these shadows their entire life and nothing else, they must be convinced that these shadows are in fact all that is real. But what if a prisoner is freed from bondage?

If the prisoner turns around she sees the blinding light of the fire and she sees the people walking with objects in front of it. She realizes that the fire and the objects are the cause of the shadows she assumed was the true reality. As she moves behind the fire she sees a deep slope leading outside the cave. When she reaches the outside, she is blinded by the light of the outside world and must become used to it. First, she goes outside in the moonlight and later looks at the shadows of the trees, because the sunlight hurts her eyes. She realizes that this outside world is the origin of the fire in the cave as well as the objects which cast the shadows on the cave wall. Eventually, she beholds the sun and realizes that this is the foundation of all things that makes observing the outside world possible. If she were to return to the cave, she would be overwhelmed by the darkness, and if she were to tell the other prisoners what she has seen they will think she is mad, they might even kill her.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a story of the pursuit and attainment of wisdom. The cave represents the world of the senses. For Plato, this isn’t the true world but is rather a representation of a higher order of existence. The shadows on the cave wall represent illusion (eikasia) based on second-hand knowledge, rumors, opinions and unsubstantiated ‘truths’ that proliferate in the world. The prisoners are people who are held in bondage by these fake representations of truth.

The freed prisoner is the philosopher. The objects in front of the fire is a truer form of reality and the fire is that which enables us to have the senses in the first place. This order of reality is still not the true reality and a person who is situated at this level is operating on the basis of belief (pistis). The steep slope that leads outside the cave represents the hard work of becoming educated and cultivating wisdom. The shadows cast by the trees is the truths of mathematics and deeper rationality, where the philosopher is actually obtaining real knowledge through the use of reasoning (dianoia).

The trees and objects that are outside the cave are the true reality. This level of existence is governed by the eternal expressions of absolute reality that can never change or be destroyed. The ‘Forms’ as he called these eternal expressions are the very blueprints upon which reality is erected and can only be known through intelligence (noesis). By knowing the Forms, the philosopher can finally look at the sun, the Good itself, and attain true wisdom and know the Truth. However, the philosopher will have extreme difficulty persuading the prisoners that their world is false. They will see her as mad, and may even persecute her like his teacher Socrates. But the philosopher must nonetheless still try to reach the world outside the cave and try to free those still held in bondage.